After the mysterious chests in the crown vaults, we've now added Crown Guardians to your high-level Vault Runs! These Guardians are not only very dangerous, they also bring a couple of changes to the ways Crown Vaults & Crowns work. They even have their own music!

To help you fight these giants, we've got a brand new mutation: Stress. Stress improves your rate of fire as your health lowers. As you might imagine, 1HP Y.V. with Rhino Skin and Stress is a glorious thing. Other than that, you'll run into more I.D.P.D. after the Crystal Caves, a lot of bugs have been fixed, fire traps now shoot slower fire, energy weapons now receive more ammo, and the Sewers are now covered in a smelly fog!

Features

Crown Guardians! These dangerous foes will be found in Crown Vaults after the first one.

A great new track for the Crown Guardians.

Stress. This brand new mutation gives you a higher rate of fire when your health is lower. A great match for characters such as Rebel and Chicken!

Stinky fog in the sewers.

Balancing

Drops now give you more energy ammo. The ammo cap is still the same, so this should work well with the high ammo use nature of energy weapons.

Fire from the Traps has been made a bit slower.

You no longer take damage when big enemy corpses bump into you.

Sight range in dark levels has been reduced, but Eyes now sees even more.

Fixes

Grenades, slugs, and shotgun pellets are now deflectable.

The Proto Chest should no longer spawn on top of the Crown.

Fixed the way levels are loaded, so that it no longer rains in the secret level.

Big Weapon Chests no longer appear in the secret level.

New collision masks for the plasma weapons.

The Proto Chest no longer gives an error when the player dies.

You can no longer walk past Trap fire. Can't believe we didn't find out about this earlier!

Made some small fixes to the way Big Health Chests spawn.

Labs should no longer start with an activated portal.

Chests sometimes spawned with a bit of wind next to them, this should no longer happen.

Cursed Chests no longer turn into Big Weapon Chests when opened.

Misc

Some minor changes to the enemy shooting code.

Allies now show a heal effect when healed.

Chests after the Crystal Caves now spawn with I.D.P.D. Grunts instead of Bandits.

The secret level music has been updated.

The ambient tracks for Laboratory and Scrapyard have been updated.

Freaks now sometimes fly through portals heading to the Laboratory.

Next week is going to be the last big update for a while. It will be followed by a minor update, and then we'll have to take a break while we're visiting the Game Developers Conference.

We want to use this big update for two thing: Performance, and the IDPD. Hopefully we can get the game to run a bit better, so that you can fight those new and improved I.D.P.D. soldiers in glorious 320x240 at 30fps!

This week brings two brand new high-level systems to the game. Both have something to do with the Crowns. One of them is very cool, the other is very mean. We love both. Expect some more cool changes to the Crown Vaults next week, as Paul has been working on something very exciting for that.

Joonas also finished all the mutation sounds this week, which is a good reason to pick some you normally don't go for!

Other than that, we now have a new Crown that deals damage over time but gives you ammo and sometimes even weapons, sounds for Wolves and Lab enemies, the very powerful Laser Cannon, and some notable fixes to the way Plant's camera behaves! That's beside the usual load of fixes, balancing, and small additions.

Anyway, we'll stop writing so you can get to playing with over fifty as soon as possible. Please don't forget to share the word about the game, and let us know what you think on Twitter, Facebook and on the forums!

Features

Something very mean waiting for you after the first Crown Vault!

Something very mysterious waiting for you in the second Crown Vault!

Unique sounds for all mutations!

Crown of Hatred is now the Crown of Love. There's a new Crown of Hatred that deals damage over time in exchange for drops.

A Laser Cannon, lifted straight out of Super Crate Box!

Sounds for the Wolves & all Lab enemies.

Balancing

Ravens now no longer shoot you from point-blank range.

Plant's camera now only locks to the Snare when the right mouse button is held. This doesn't work with gamepad yet, but we're planning a big update to overhaul all the input code soon that will fix that.

The Opposite Crown has been removed. For those wondering what it even did, it made the rare floor tiles common, and the common floor tiles rare. Something that wasn't very interesting, didn't look very good, and messed up the gameplay.

Fixes

Eyes' Telekinesis no longer works on enemy lasers.

IDPD no longer shows up in Crown Vaults because that's disrespectful.

For the third time: Chicken no longer teleports...

Lil' Hunter now plays its own sound at appearance instead of Big Bandit's.

Secret level now loads up to 100%.

Misc

A little effect when healing.

Lab enemies now appear after looping.

Some changes to the walls in Crown Vaults.

Chests now have their shadow 1 pixel higher and it looks so much better!

For starters, we bring you the Hyper Launcher. An incredibly powerful high-level explosive weapon, shooting instant hit grenades. Happy with this weapon? Then you should totally get yourself the brand new Crown of Hatred. This crown replaces all Weapon Chests and Radiation Canisters with Ammo Chests! Perfect for those who never want to change their equipment. We also have two new B-Skins for you, and some very subtle, but important tweaks to the floor tiles in most areas. They should now look less repetitive and more interesting!

Let's see, what else... We buffed a lot of mutations. Gamma Guts & Laser Brain now both deal more damage, and, good news for Minigun fans, Recycle Gland now gives you ammo whenever you hit something, instead of whenever you miss.

Oh yeah, one last small thing. We added a whole new area called Laboratory, filled with 4 brand new enemy types and a whole load of scientific props. You'll be fighting several types of Mutated Mutants and something so sinister we can't begin to describe it. The Labs will be the transitional area to the "final" area, so you're all getting closer to the Throne! Don't worry about the game being close to finished, because some of this week was spent sketching out what is left to do, and there is still a giant amount of stuff we want to add. The game now only has a fraction of the secret content we want it to have, and we're still working on a whole load of meta- and endgame additions. Other than that, we're preparing for some pretty big code changes to finally make the game run better for everyone. It'll take a lot of effort, but it's something we'll have to do some time in the following weeks.

Thanks for joining us on this ride, and enjoy your update!

Features

Laboratory!

Two brand new B-Skins!

The Crown of Hatred.

The Hyper Launcher, which is JW's personal favorite.

Some significant changes to the tiles in Desert & Sewers, making them look less repetitive.

The screen now shakes whenever Yung Venuz uses his air horn.

Balancing

Gamma Guts now deals more damage to enemies.

Lasers & Energy slashes last even longer with Laser Brain.

Recycle Gland now gives ammo on hits, instead of on misses.

Enemies in Frozen City drop more ammo.

Alligators have slightly less HP.

Mimics now drop more radiation.

Flamethrower spawns slightly earlier.

Auto Crossbow spawns slightly later.

As requested on the forums, the Wolves & Frogs now wait a bit longer before their AI kicks in.

B-Skins have been made slightly more rare.

The screen now shakes whenever Yung Venuz uses his air horn.

Fixes

After trying the new movement system, we listened to the feedback and made some fixes. On top, players will no longer get stuck on corners.

Rad Canisters finally have a corpse! No more checking the whole level to see if you opened it or not.

The enemies in the secret level have been fixed, solving some weird collision issues.

We fixed some typos.

Crossbows no longer kill you or your Allies.

Lil' Hunter no longer gives an error when shooting at an already dead player.

The screen now shakes whenever Yung Venuz uses his air horn.

Misc

The way the darkness is handled has changed a lot. There is now a smaller bright circle around the Player, but the circle around that is now less dark. The amount of light objects give has also been changed. We're looking forward to how this change affects the game's balance.

Okay, something big has happened this week. One of the things we've been wanting to implement for a very long time, is in the game now: Secret Areas. Somewhere in the depths of Nuclear Throne, you can now reach one. We won't tell you where, and we won't tell you how. All we can tell you is that we are super excited for all of you to start looking for it.

Other than that, we have some pretty good changes: Rebel has been changed around a bit, with (smarter) allies now healing whenever you spawn a new one, and a different kind of attack on the passive ability.

We also added a new high-level melee weapon and a new enemy in Frozen City, which should make that area feel a bit more complete. Other than that, usual bugfixes and a whole load of new sound effects and graphics! Enjoy.

Features

A very secret new area.

Robot Wolves now roam the Frozen City.

You'll be able to find the deadly Energy Screwdriver in later areas.

Sound effects for fire weapons.

Allies now heal whenever you spawn a new one as Rebel, and her passive now spawns Ally bullets instead of Blood Explosions.

Loading screen portals now look different depending on where you're going!

Balancing

Mimics have been made a tiny bit more rare, to catch players off guard more often.

Enemies in caves now drop a bit less radiation.

Fixes

Enemies should no longer spawn inside walls, which should also fix the portal not spawning when all the enemies seem dead.

Chicken should no longer teleport around when slashing near walls.

Shovel now works with Long Arms.

Ally AI has been improved.

Misc

Debris now disappears into smoke, not dust.

Tiles can now support more than 4 different images.

Tiles in Crown Vaults have been updated a bit.

New prop in Scrapyard.

Rebel now has a campfire animation.

Robot now has a simpler, less ridiculous campfire animation.

The Frozen City wall art has been changed a bit.

More loading screen tips have been added.

Big Bandit's death animation has been updated.

We worked a bit more on Labs, which should be in the next update!

We're just chipping away at this as much as we can, and we're figuring out where our focus for the next few weeks is going to be. In a few weeks, in early March, the Game Developers Conference will cause us to go dark and not update for a week (or maybe two), and we want to have the game in a completely different spot than we have it now by then.

Apologies for the late upload, as you might remember Rami's computer melted down during the Thursday livestream. Everything is replaced now, so we're happy to announce that this weeks update features lots of fixes! We intended to get the first secret level in this week, but because Jan Willem suffered from some weird flu and migraines those haven't made it in yet. Instead we present you some updated music from Jukio, proper wall collisions and a pile of fixes that should hopefully increase stability across the board.

Features

The player no longer weirdly slides along walls when pushing against them. The new system will still get a little work to help you walk around corners, but should at least stop you from getting killed because the game thinks you want to walk into a Scorpion.

This change will obviously impact a lot of the game, so we're going to go and make this the main change for this week to see how that resolves.

Other Features

Mysterious music could appear in Frozen City now.

Tips can now be based on your current Crown and Mutations.

The Desert music got a small update.

Balancing

We made unlocking Rebel a lot easier for now. The unlock system works, so until we've decided upon what to do with the system we'll leave it like this.

Shotguns have been buffed a bit, now having 1 extra pellet per shell fired.

Crown of Life now gives you +6 HP at the end of each level.

Hyper Rifles and Gold Weapons spawns slightly later.

Flame weapons spawn earlier.

Fixes

The Statue now always spawns in the 2nd level in a world after the first Desert. No more sad empty tiles!

Looping into an area lower than the area needed to unlock a character now also unlocks that character.

Debris should cause a lot less slowdown.

Some changes and fixes to the level generation.

Fish is no longer invulnerable after getting hit once while rolling/using his Throne Butt.

The volume for the Boss Killed jingle is now the same as music volume.

The game now frees memory used for music before shutting down.

Enemy SFX are no longer all preloaded, probably freeing some CPU and fixing music issues for people.

Even more tinkering with audio memory stuff...

Mimics now also spawn in Desert after looping.

There are no longer holes in the grass in Scrapyard.

Misc

We started work on the first secret area. Not implemented yet.

The way tiles are handled is now a bit more versatile and perhaps even faster.

The ambient tracks for Frozen City & Scrapyard have been updated.

Fire now lights up the darkness.

We're very curious how all these fixes influence the game for you! Let us know, and come hang out in our dev streams every Tuesday and Thursday around 1PM CET. Have fun!